I'm an existential questioner that likes to discuss controversial topics, hang out with my animals, listen to the Joe Rogan Experience, and expand my mind.
Find me @bonniesein on twitter and instagram to see what I get up to outside of this blog.

a real nice guy.

So I saw this project on Kickstarter and it made me really angry. It's called 'Bible Basics: A Baby Believer Counting Primer'. There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start. As an advocate for freedom of speech, I am aware of the irony in the fact that my distaste for religion being preached to children, falls under the right to free speech. Unfortunately all I can do is talk about why I think it's inappropriate, but at the end of the day, people can do what they want and teach their children whatever they believe in. SIGH. "Bible Basics is a counting board book designed to introduce babies and toddlers to the basics of the Christian faith." Designed to introduce BABIES to the Christian faith. Through counting. BABIES. BABIES THAT DROOL AND POOP THEMSELVES AND DON'T KNOW HOW TO SAY JESUS. I mean, come the fuck on man. Is that really necessary? You're teaching a baby how to count here. Do you really need to introduce them to Noah's Ark and how he got 2 of "every" animal to hop on a boat together? I say "every" because the bible doesn't mention marsupials or dinosaurs at all, but yeah, sure, whatever, Noah had a boat full of animals that didn't kill each other or kill him. I don't know about you guys, but I've seen enough videos of people getting mauled by animals to know that even fucking Noah wouldn't have gotten out of that one alive. Anyway. What's the goal here, when teaching babies about religion? Is it for the babies sake? Because I can tell you right now that the baby gives ZERO fucks about your beliefs in religion. All a baby cares about is getting love, getting food, getting sleep and getting its butt wiped. They don't care about their sanctity. They don't care about whether or not they're going to heaven or hell. They. Don't. Care. But YOU care. By the way, I realise I'm using a boat load of capslock words here but it's completely necessary and grammatically sound and not dramatic at all. Like, do parents that want to teach their babies about the basics of Christian faith get some sort of satisfaction out of being able to brag to other parents? "I taught Billy about Jesus being nailed on the cross at 3 months old." "Well I taught Susie that Jesus died and came back to life when she was only 2 hours old, so I guess I'm the better person and God loves me more." Is it to get brownie points with god? Is it for the welfare of your baby? Is god that demanding that you need to start teaching your new born baby about Christianity or else he'll smite you? I just don't understand it. I need someone to explain it to me. I don't even feel like I'm overreacting. And the worst part is that this Kickstarter has gotten full funding. It's actually exceeded its funding requirements. For a fucking baby bible book. WHAT IS THIS WORLD.

I watched the documentary Zeitgeist: The Movie the other night. After watching it I immediately googled "Zeitgeist debunked" to see how much of it was full of shit. There are absolutely some parts that have been debunked, however there are some parts that I've actually researched previously and haven't found much info on it otherwise. Like the common theme that many "prophets" that pre-date the story of Jesus have parallels on their life stories. Like being born of a virgin birth, rising from the dead (physically (allegedly) or symbolically), suffering for their people, being the son of god or a god and performing miracles. Horus, Heracles, Buddha, Krishna, Dionysus, Romulus, Odysseus... There's a lot of debunking around birth dates, but in terms of parallels, it is compelling. And it's not surprising to be honest. History repeats itself. But it is suspicious, how many so-called prophets have almost the exact same life story. Google it for yourself if you have doubts, but for the most part, I can't find much fault in this argument. Zeitgeist claims that the story actually originates from our worship of the sun, and there's a lot of hidden celestial symbolism in these stories. Another interesting part of the documentary covers 9/11. I just don't feel comfortable really discussing any of the 9/11 theories because to be honest, I don't know enough. Everything I think I know, I can immediately have debunked. I can listen to two people with the same background in the exact same field, who have entirely different opinions of what happened. Whether it be how the towers fell, why there appears to be mini explosions occurring around the buildings, why the towers couldn't withstand the crashes even though they were built to structurally withhold plan crashes... But there are a few questions where I haven't found any answers for like why there were explosions in the basement before the towers were hit, why there were no black boxes found (although there is a story of a man finding a black box and then having it seized by FBI agents moments later), and the most compelling argument of them all: why was there thermite found at the scene? What I do know is that the majority of Americans (89% from a CNN poll, 81% from a New York Times/CBS poll) believe that the government is lying about what really happened. That is a huge percentage of people, and I think the US government has not been transparent about what they really knew. I find it extremely hard to believe that they had no idea about the attacks (there are countless reports of foreign countries warning the US of an inevitable attack), and that once they were aware that the planes had been hijacked, why there seemed to be very minimal effort made to evacuate potential attack zones like the WTC (which although the government claimed it was an "unimaginable" event, NORAD had conducted training exercises 2 years beforehand using hijacked airliners as weapons and the WTC as one of the targets) and why NORAD completely failed on the day to attempt any type of intervention. The government also couldn't determine where the money came from that funded the attacks, and stated that the question was "...of little practical significance". Of little practical significance. How can they even say that? In what universe is that question of little significance? And now we find out that fucking Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia, being the most important ally in the Middle East for the US because it is rich af and has oil. Which evidently we now know that the government actually did know that it was the Saudis, except they couldn't say anything because they needed to stay in good ties with them (and it wasn't Saudi Arabia that they wanted to invade). It's sickening. It's actually disgusting that America aligns themselves with Saudi Arabia, which on top of not only funding terrorism, also promotes and advocates the oppression and degradation of women. And then there's tower 7. The 9/11 commission can't explain why it collapsed, to the point where they don't even mention it in the report. It took them 7 years to conduct an investigation into the collapse due to public demand and questioning, and even now there is still no clear explanation for what happened. And then the pentagon attack, where the FBI seized all footage of the attack and has never released any of it, not even under the freedom of information act. The pentagon attack is really strange, especially as the area that was destroyed, was the office of the auditors that were looking into the spending of $2.3 trillion dollars that couldn't be accounted for. All evidence, documents and auditors were destroyed in the attack. And then I guess everyone just dropped the subject of the trillions of dollars missing. How trillions of dollars of spending can go unaccounted for I don't know, but I think that there are various inconsistencies here that just aren't being truthfully discussed in a public forum. And that's all I'm going to say on that.

So I've been doing a lot of research lately on why in certain religions, women have to be more conservative than men. Now before I go any further, I'm using Islam as my example because it is the most drastic of the religions in terms of demanding women be covered up, but you also see this practice with Orthodox Jews, Catholic Nuns, in some forms of Hinduism, just to name a few. I really wanted to find an Islamic explanation for it so I could understand it more clearly from the perspective of someone who is invested in the faith. I found a website called Ideal Muslim Ah that explained their side of it. Here's a snippet of what theysaid:

To anyone that may consider this apparent bias, I ask one question: Do you think God really would favor a man over a woman? Would Allah, the Just and the Protecting Friend, ask women to do something that is burdensome and free of any reward? To think in such a way is blasphemy, but it is also a testament of how well you understand your faith and Allah’s orders. A man and a woman can never be the same entity despite being equal in status. We look different, think in different ways, and respond differently to the same situation. Allah has made men and women strikingly different.One of the major differences is how we physically look and what we are attracted to. Numerous studies have shown that men are attracted to visuals, while women are more attracted to audio. This inherent difference articulates that men are pulled more towards visuals than women are and it follows that men find it more difficult to remove themselves from such an attraction. So why is that men are not required to cover what is haraam for a woman to look at? For instance, a man is not required to cover his chest and yet, a woman must lower her gaze, since it is a sin to look at the exposed chest of a man. The situation itself testifies that a woman is stronger than a man when it comes to controlling herself. Allah, the Bestower of Form and the Fashioner, is actually honoring the woman by giving her the ability to control herself so well. In this way, one of the reasons why Allah has obligated women to cover would be because man may not be able to exert the same level of control as a woman. Without hijab, a woman radiates – biologically, receptors go out to attract the opposite gender. With hijab, however, the attraction is reduced dramatically and it is easier for men to go about without looking lustfully.

So, my first takeaway on this excerpt is that it's blasphemous to even question the fact that Allah favours men over women. Well I can safely say that in most of the main religions, the degradation of women, and the favouritism towards men, is obvious. It doesn't take long to realise that in the Abrahamic religions, women are second class citizens. Here are a few examples as evidence to women's inferior status:

Quran (2:282) "And call to witness, from among your men, two witnesses. And if two men be not found then a man and two women."

Bible (I Corinthians 11:3) "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God."
Bible (I Corinthians 11:8-9) "For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man."

Orthodox Jewish morning prayer:
"Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe,
who did not make me a Gentile,
who did not make me a Slave,
who did not make me a Woman."

I mean, we all know that religion isn't progressive. That's certainly not a new argument. But to say that it's blasphemy to even question god about this, well yeah, there's grounds for questioning. Why are women degraded in these so-called holy texts? Could it be, perhaps, that they were written by *drum roll please*... MEN? Shock horror! Isn't it obvious that if god really was as good as everyone says he is, he would never favour one gender over the other? He just wouldn't. And if he does see women as inferior, then why the fuck would you want to praise someone like that? "Bonnie you're cherry picking quotes." I don't care. I know there are nice and lovely quotes in the bible and quran, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the fucked up shit that's in there. And you can't deny it. Because I just wrote it. And you can't pull the historical context card, because either way, no matter when this was written, it's still degrading and it's still stupid. Isn't it obvious that this is all made up? Like, aren't there enough clues here to make you go, "Oh wow, yeah the bible is just full of shit." Anyway, back to my original point in regards to women having to be modest.

The next part of the explanation is that men are more visually attracted to things, whereas women find more pleasure in auditory stimulation. I call bullshit on that statement straight off the bat. I've tried to find research into this, and there's really nothing out there saying this. What I did find was that women and men are stimulated by different things, but visual stimulation is the most arousing for both genders. Continuing on, it's stated that "...man is not required to cover his chest and yet, a woman must lower her gaze, since it is a sin to look at the exposed chest of a man. The situation itself testifies that a woman is stronger than a man when it comes to controlling herself." Okay, yep, women are better at controlling themselves sexually. That I agree with. The whole shaming the body thing, I mean it makes sense that if you want to control people, you need to suppress their desires and their inhibitions to keep them in check. To also control the spread of sexual diseases in a time where they didn't know what germs were or how diseases spread, it makes sense that if promiscuity resulted in illness (transmitted STDs), then I can see how they came to the conclusion that if you slept around you would be punished (because they thought someone getting sick was a punishment by god). So that makes sense (except surely we've evolved to realise that shaming the body and sexual behaviour is completely irrelevant now in this day and age). The next part is what really fucks me off."Allah, the Bestower of Form and the Fashioner, is actually honoring the woman by giving her the ability to control herself so well. In this way, one of the reasons why Allah has obligated women to cover would be because man may not be able to exert the same level of control as a woman. Without hijab, a woman radiates – biologically, receptors go out to attract the opposite gender. With hijab, however, the attraction is reduced dramatically and it is easier for men to go about without looking lustfully."

Oh gee-whiz, Allah seems like a real nice guy. I should be so thankful that I should have to cover my own head (and body if I'm rocking the burqa), to make life easier for men. What an honour. What a privilege that I should have to change the way I look, so that men don't have to worry about controlling themselves. Sorry, but this argument sounds reminiscent of when people blame rape victims about the fact that they shouldn't have been wearing a dress or showing cleavage because it was an invitation for someone to rape them. How about just fucking control yourself like every other normal human being on this planet? I always thought that the main reason for why women wore the hijab was to be modest for god, but clearly that is not the case. The main reason is so that women don't tempt men. And if they do get raped, well then it's the woman's fault right? Because they weren't modest enough. Man seriously, I just don't know how progressives can defend this? And did anyone ever think that the reason why there is such a huge sexual assault crisis in these middle eastern countries is because of the fact that women have been so oppressed for so long, that men have no idea what it's like to actually be around women that aren't being "modest". And especially when men feel entitled by their own god that they are the superior gender, then what do you expect to happen? It's insanity.

I'm going through this weird internal struggle about eating animals. Like, I'm still eating meat, but I'm always thinking, "Could I have killed this animal?" I'm not an ignorance is bliss kinda gal, and at some point I want to go hunting to see if I can actually kill an animal. Because if I can't, I don't deserve to eat meat. I mean, I think hunting is a super sustainable practice and at the end of the day is much more humane and manageable than factory farming. It's just difficult to do in Australia. But at some point Wade and I are most likely going to live in the US, and when we do we plan to live somewhere that we can hunt regularly and live off of the meat we've gotten for ourselves.

I hate zoos. I don't know if I've spoken about this before, but I really hate zoos. I don't think we should even have zoos. They're animal prisons. They're absurd. If you want to conserve animals, do it in privacy, in the most natural environment possible for that animal. Don't do it behind a wall of glass with gawking human beings standing on the other side. It makes me feel sick thinking about it. Especially when you see really intelligent animals stuck in zoos like Orangutans and Gorillas. It's weird how everyone is outraged about Seaworld (rightfully so though - fuck those assholes making orcas do backflips in a bathtub), but nobody really talks about zoos. Keeping apes in zoos is just as bad. Somebody needs to do a Blackfish style documentary on apes in zoos.

So Zeus has decided that he's just not going to eat certain things. Like, he's just going through this snot nosed teenager phase where he's like, "No I don't want to eat chicken for dinner." He literally didn't eat for a day and I was like HE HAS CANCER. And then I tried feeding him eggs instead and he ate everything. Little shit. Thor is the golden child in the family. He's just the perfect dog. He doesn't cause issues, he keeps to himself, he eats when you give him food, he has a lot of pig tendencies that make him even cuter than he already is, he has an outrageous underbite... He's just perfect. And then there's Zeus. Our first born. Technically we don't know who was born first out of the two, but we got Zeus first so we call him our first born. Zeus has an attitude. He likes to push boundaries, test you, see what he can get away with. He's a bit of a bully sometimes, and is VERY cheeky. Zeus is also a big baby. He's really needy and LOVES affection. Like if you curled up with Zeus for the night, that'd be the best thing to ever happen to him. He just wants to be near you all the time. And I love that part about Zeus because Thor is definitely not as inclined for prolonged cuddles like Zeus is. But yeah, Zeus loves to just see what he can get away with. So at the moment he's testing us with food. But I can't do anything about it because he literally won't eat unless I give him eggs. And I thought I was stubborn. He would rather starve himself than eat chicken right now. What kind of dog turns down chicken? Seriously. I just don't see myself having kids, because my dog problems are enough as it is. And don't even get me started on Mr Moe. I can't discipline him at all. He's not very naughty though. He likes to tip over the bin in our office and jump into the bathroom sink to drink out of the tap (I turn the tap on for him). But that's about it. The last couple of nights he's been sleeping under the blankets with his head on my pillow. It's like sleeping with a furry hot water bottle. I love it. Even if he does sit on my head and try to eat my hair in the mornings.

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about me

I'm Bonnie. A 25 year old Melbourne based writer, listener of the Joe Rogan Experience, lover of adventure, and enjoyer of all things food related. I like to sweat by doing yoga, bjj or crossfit style workouts. But I also like to play computer games for 8 hours straight (because balance). Back in 2012 I broke my neck and started this blog.